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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422474">Anakin, Ahsoka, and Hope</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven'>LittleRaven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Gen, Meta, Meta Essay, Nonfiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:42:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some thoughts on the connections made between Anakin and Ahsoka's stories in both shows.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ahsoka Tano &amp; Darth Vader, Ahsoka Tano/Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker &amp; Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker/Ahsoka Tano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>March Meta Matters Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Anakin, Ahsoka, and Hope</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This meta was originally posted in the Star Wars Rare Pairs Pillowfort community in June 2018. It was edited and reposted on my Tumblr on July 20, 2018, the day after the announcement that <i>The Clone Wars</i> was returning.  The latter version is what appears in this work; the title is what I used to name the file in my documents.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This is something I posted elsewhere a bit ago, and have been wanting to repost here. With the happiness yesterday brought me, now’s as good a time as any!</p><p>I wanted to talk about Anakin with Ahsoka and Vader with Ahsoka.</p><p>The last season of Rebels brought to light the end of their confrontation, and what came after. What I find interesting is that although Vader was trying to kill Ahsoka, she was saved because of Anakin.</p><p>It’s the Mortis connection. During The Clone Wars, Ahsoka died and Anakin, refusing to accept it, put the a goddess inside her. The embodiment of the light side. Because, in his words at the time, “there’s always hope.”</p><p>Given that they’re foils, meant to be similar but on different paths, I think it’s interesting. The similarities have been noted before—it’s in the movie Ahsoka’s introduced in, that she’s impulsive and Anakin sees himself in her—and they’re brought up again here, in Ahsoka’s vision: “You have seeds of the dark side in you, planted by your master.” This is the first time that the specter of Anakin’s future is brought up in regards to Ahsoka, and the first explicit suggestion of how his darkness might affect her. It is also almost her first encounter with Vader, as Anakin falls and she narrowly avoids encountering him.</p><p>Fitting, then, that she dies and is reborn. The dark side kills her, the light side saves her. His entire life in the prequels is about saving those he loved; in Attack of the Clones, he vowed to conquer death. Ahsoka is the only time he ever did. It’s almost a prophecy, and an assurance.</p><p>This story arc is around the time The Clone Wars began to tell its stories chronologically, and Ahsoka is on a continuing arc of improvement over several arcs dedicated to the same, which can be felt to a much larger extent than in the scattered episodes earlier in the show. She takes care of herself without Anakin, she takes care of him, she handles her insecurities and pain over love more smoothly than he does, she becomes a mentor for younglings; finally, she leaves the Order when she sees it isn’t right, letting go rather than clinging. Ahsoka grows to be the Knight Anakin himself cannot be, because as Filoni put it at last year’s celebration, “she makes the choices Anakin couldn’t.” She is like him, good and bad, but she won’t follow his path.</p><p>So when they meet again, she is every thing he isn’t: a warrior for justice, doing good wherever she can and protecting the needy, freeing them of the oppression Anakin once wanted to fight against and now enacts, free herself, bound to no master. She’s the light to his dark.</p><p>She reaches him through his mask. They both have moments where they deny each other; it’s what makes them the most comfortable. Looking back into the past is painful. Denying his identity, or seeing him as too far gone, allowing herself the vengeance she’d just declared, would’ve been easier. She reaches him anyway, seeing him clearly and making the connection they both wanted and feared. That is when he finally tries to kill her. Out of rage at the memory, and finding no other route to forestall the feelings it stirs. It’s Vader’s last word on the relationship.</p><p>It’s not Anakin’s. That light she found in him, the good she saw, is what he was at his best and will come to know he can’t fully erase. Vader destroyed everything he loved; Malachor reinforced it–or so he thought. As Ahsoka is the only one Anakin succeeded in saving, she is the only one Vader failed to kill. (Until Luke.) He put a goddess inside her, the embodiment of the light. This is how Ezra saves her: he notes her connection to the divine and follows the path Anakin did. Vader may try to kill her, but he can’t override it; when he’s being true to himself, when he’s Anakin, he saves her. He bent the universe to save her, he tied her into the the Star Wars theme of hope, and when she was reborn that hope became part of her story, not just for one arc but for every part that came after it.</p><p>She outlives the Order, she outlives him, she outlives his Empire and the loss (one way or another) of every person she ever cared about. She’s what was good about the Jedi, and most of all what was good about Anakin, reaching out and living through the worst of their times. As he could not truly destroy himself, he couldn’t destroy what flourished in her. Because of him, that goodness that never fully disappeared no matter how much he wanted it gone, she did survive. Because of who she chose to be in light of all she’s seen. Because she stayed true to herself, where he couldn’t.</p><p>Back when they were both young, he laid down a mandate that she would live, because “there’s always hope.” She does, and there is.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Following the Tumblr, trend of adding commentary to tags, my Tumblr post had these: <br/>it's a full circle, timeless and forever, 'it's the will of the force that you are at my side', the will of the force and Anakin's will are here indistinguishable</p></blockquote></div></div>
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